Recruiting Blog

July 30, 2018

Recruiting Is Tougher | GDP Growth Makes Filling Jobs Harder

Recruiting is getting harder due to the U.S. economy growing at its fastest pace in nearly four years! This is especially true for technical, engineering, scientific, information technology or IT, research and development or R&D and manufacturing job recruitment.

Economic Expansion Contributing To Job Candidate Shortages

The current, robust economic expansion has been a catalyst for many of our clients to starting filling job openings that have been on hold for many months. As a result, we are in a War for Talent for many key job candidates. This has resulted in the demand for key workers far outstripping the supply!

This is particularly true for recruiting an engineer, scientist, IT or technical professional in cutting edge fields such as Virtual Reality or VR, Artificial Intelligence or AI or drug development. It is even case for those seeking to recruit a Civil Engineer that is a PE (Professional Engineer).

As a result, countless engineering and technical jobs are going unfilled for many months. This results in productivity losses without the right technology talent in place to actuate important company projects.

Need For An Aggressive, Pro-active Recruiting Approach

To counteract the shortage of engineers, scientists and technical professionals, I recommend taking a pro-active approach to recruiting. This means expanding your recruitment efforts beyond the time when you have a job opening. This is consistent with my 8th Commandment of Recruiting, “Constantly Recruit”.

Then keep in touch with this talent and build a potential employee database. Then when you have a job opening they may be available to meet your staffing needs. Remember to constantly recruit.

Commerce Department hails 4.1% Growth In Economy

The Commerce Department shared last Friday that the economy grew at 4.1% in the second quarter. This suggests that the second-longest expansion on record isn’t loosing its momentum.
This economic growth was driven by a variety of factors including robust consumer spending, solid business investment, surging exports and increased government outlays. That was up from the first quarter’s revised growth rate of 2.2% and is the strongest growth since the third quarter of 2014.

Considerable Proof For Continued Economic Expansion

MasterCard Inc. CEO Ajay Banga feels that recent trade tensions have not yet caused widespread economic damage. “There are geopolitical and trade-related risks that we are keeping a close eye on,” Mr. Banga told investors on a call Thursday. “But as of now, they had limited impact to date and global economic trends remained generally positive.”

“The outlook for the industrial economy remains solid,” United Parcel Service Inc. Chief Executive David Abney said during a call with investors last Wednesday.

Additionally, consumers ramped up their spending to a robust 4% annual pace in the second quarter. This was riven by low unemployment, steady job growth and the recent tax cut.

A key measure of business spending moderated from the first quarter but remained robust. Nonresidential fixed investment reflects spending on commercial construction, equipment and intellectual property products such as software. It rose at a 7.3% rate after rising 11.5% in the first quarter.

The 2017 tax overhaul was designed to encourage such investments. It lowered the corporate tax rate allowing companies to immediately deduct certain capital expenditures instead of depreciating them over time.

Tax cuts were part of President Donald Trump’s plan to boost economic growth above the 3% annual growth rate that marked the robust expansions of the 20th century. He hailed the GDP report Friday, saying the economy is growing at a “very sustainable” pace. He predicted it will expand at least 3% this year.

Although good for the economy in general, further expansion is likely to make recruiting technical, engineering, scientific, information technology (IT), research and development (R&D) and manufacturing positions more difficult in the coming months, and possibly years.